The World Bank’s recent report "Golden Growth: Restoring the Lustre of the European Economic Model" was presented in Sofia

Bulgaria has strengthened trade, finance and enterprise and has kept its government solvent; now it has to improve government efficiency and offset a declining workforce with investments in skills, Indermit Gill, World Bank Chief Economist for Europe and Central Asia, said in Sofia on 15 March 2012.

In the past decades, Europe has followed the golden rule for growth, which looks at how much people have to work, save, and invest today so that future generations could be at least as well off as they were, the World Bank said in a statement.

According to it Bulgaria has also become part of Europe’s golden growth model benefiting from economic convergence.

The report looks at long-term growth in Europe, paying special attention to the past two decades, and identifies what needs to be done to assure continued prosperity in the decades ahead. It assesses the six principal components of the European growth model: trade, finance, enterprise, innovation, labour, and government.

According to Gill, one of the lead authors of the report, "most countries in Europe are doing well in trade and finance, many in enterprise and innovation, but few are doing well in labour and government”.

Discussions focused around three key recommendations of the report – to restart the "convergence machine" that has allowed poorer countries to become high income economies; rebuild "brand Europe" that has helped the region, with one-tenth of the world’s population, account for a third of the global economic output; and reassess what it takes to remain the world's "lifestyle superpower", with the highest quality of life on the planet.

According to the report, preserving Europe’s global brand will be somewhat more difficult than restarting convergence, but still well within the continent’s reach. Trade and finance have to be made even more durable so that the continent becomes a single economy.
Enterprises in the northern and EFTA economies—already among the most innovative in the world—have to be provided fuller access to markets in the rest of Europe.

Europe will have to work on many fronts to deal with impending labour shortages: increasing the competition for jobs, improving labour mobility, fixing how work and welfare are facilitated, and rethinking immigration policies. These changes will need a new social consensus, the World Bank said.

Apart of these challenges Europe should also move towards a greener economic model. Europe is promoting the clean energy transition, but still falling short on greener consumption.

Bulgaria has become a net importer of carbon emissions as the importance of heavy industries has dropped. It could now focus efforts to take advantage of green growth opportunities in a market that is expected to grow to three trillion euro by 2020, the World Bank statement concluded.